Medical Countermeasures Against Chemical Threats

Respiratory Tract

Long-Term Goals

• Determine specific mechanisms and sites of injury to the respiratory tract, from the systemic to the molecular level, for the major chemical threat agents
• Identify the healing processes and immune responses in the respiratory tract following chemically induced injury, and identify windows of opportunity for intervention
• Identify new drugs and therapeutic regimens using appropriate animal models that simulate lung injury in humans
• Identify chronic health effects associated with low and high doses of inhaled toxic chemicals and methods to prevent these effects
• Develop diagnostic tools and biological markers associated with acute lung injury
• Identify new diagnostic methods that are non-invasive and can continuously assess pulmonary function, lung inflammation, and lung injury
• Identify risk factors associated with chronic effects of lung injury, and develop strategies to prevent development of such chronic changes
• Encourage the development of a more portable, state-of-the-art, positive-pressure ventilation device that could be used in patients with acute respiratory distress during mass casualty events

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